


Puppetry

by Barid (Finale)



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Hojo being himself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 00:08:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29322948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Finale/pseuds/Barid
Summary: Why make Cloud so differently?
Relationships: Hojo & Cloud Strife, Sephiroth/Cloud Strife
Comments: 2
Kudos: 62





	Puppetry

Hojo studies the unconscious blond. Sephiroth’s surprise killer. Not First Class Fair, not Rhapsodos (who he’d spotted on the security tapes). Not even a Nibel dragon. But this no-name, scrawny, unenhanced teen had done what literal thousands had tried. 

He had killed Sephiroth, and killed him while badly injured at that.

Hojo gently presses his fingers against the injury on the teen’s chest, now sutured shut. Masamune had gone clear through the boy, and from the security tapes Sephiroth had even held him up in the air at the edge of the sword. The fact he’d just barely missed the boy’s heart is nothing short of a miracle, or maybe intentional on Sephiroth’s part. He’ll never get a chance to ask. 

Or maybe he will, because the lack of Sephiroth’s body makes him wonder. He knows that they’ve managed to dredge corpses out of mako pools before, but Sephiroth’s is just  _ gone _ . They’d been at the reactor less than five minutes after the fight had concluded, fast enough to stop Subject C from bleeding out. 

He presses down harder on Subject C’s injury, earning a soft whine of pain from him. If his son still lives in some fashion, if Reunion may still be possible… 

The rest of the surviving villagers and Subject Z will be suitable for clones. He has different plans for Subject C.

* * *

He feigns displeasure at Subject C falling into a mako induced coma. He sincerely doubts it will actually last, or that Subject Z will  _ allow _ it to last. Subject Z has remained completely cognizant throughout the experiments, even begging for them to experiment more on him rather than Subject C. 

Almost amusing that he’s never realized the real prize was Sephiroth’s killer, not him.

He’s already aware that attempting the ‘cloning’ process on a SOLDIER wouldn’t work. Even Hollander’s ‘Genesis Clones’ had been failures at the end of the day, only barely functional. Irritatingly enough it seems like the S clones aren’t much better even with civilians, but perhaps that’s due more to the nearness of Nibelheim to the reactor. At least some mako he knows had seeped into the groundwater.

Leaving the Nibelheim lab and leaving both Subjects in their mako tubes is logical. Subject Z will ‘free’ Subject C, allowing the mako to eventually be purged from him. It should  _ stabilize _ Subject C. Abnormally potent amounts of mako to even out the dramatic increase of S and J cells.

It will also allow him to do a study on how Subject Z reacts to a comatose Subject C for a prolonged period where no scientists are experimenting on them. How long it will take him to abandon C as dead weight and make him easy to retrieve, or if Subject Z even will. If he’ll keep Subject C with him until the younger awakens and potentially makes it harder to retrieve both.

(He feels a thrum in the back of his head, a thrum that has grown stronger as the past three years have passed. He recognizes it, or at least recognizes what it’s a variation of. 

He was right to do the experiments on Subject C. 

His son’s killer will be the perfect puppet for him.)

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah I have no fucking clue where this came from either. Possibly sleep deprivation, possibly too much energy in a weird way. 
> 
> Also Hojo's POV is a fucking weird headspace to get into and I am never doing this again~


End file.
